Re: mot de passe root

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Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:02:01 -0500
To: Peter Risdon <peter@circlesquared.com>

Peter Risdon wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 12:49 -0500, Bob Johnson wrote:

>> This list has for at
>>least the past eight years been multilingual.
>
>
> Kind of... it's an English language list to which posts are sometimes
> made in other languages. When that happens, generally one of the
> poster's fellow nationals gently reminds them that it's an English
> language list, and sometimes translates their questions so others can
> try to help. Sometimes not. It's informal, as we both know. But to call
> it multilingual is at best an exaggeration.
>

This is not historically accurate, at least not in my experience.
The attempt to make this an English-only list is a recent
phenomenon.

Posts in other languages were historically entirely welcome,
and the only reason people were sent to language-specific
lists was because they were likely to get better results there,
not because there was a rule requiring that they use English here.

As long as the domain name (freebsd.org) is not country-specific,
we should expect visits from new users who don't speak English
well or at all, and plan accordingly. Prohibiting them from
posting here is not appropriate, unless the name of the list
is changed to something like questions@freebsd.us.

In a previous message to me you stated:
> So it seems clear that:
>
> - English is the language in use in lists unless otherwise stated
>
> - there are non-English lists.
>

Both of those statements are true. Neither leads to the conclusion
that other languages are banned from this list. The fact that
English is the default language for this list does not imply that
other languages are banned.

> I responded because I do think it's important that the lists remain a
> useful archive, and that a call, as I read it, to splinter into many
> languages would break this.

This is hogwash. Postings in other languages are still a useful
archive. I don't claim to be multilingual, and I have certainly
never made an effort to learn French, yet I can usually read
enough of a French posting to understand the problem and proposed
solution.

Historically, the number of non-English postings has been so low
as to be a non-issue. Your conjecture about what might happen
was long ago demonstrated to be false.

The list is here to help people. Creating an arbitrary
English-only rule helps no one, and serves no useful purpose.
As much as I would like to ban the French to their own list,
I can't think of any legitimate reason to do so other than
personal prejudice.

- Bob

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